The descent from the frozen peak was a solitary, quiet journey. Ren Hanshin walked down the jagged, ice-covered steps of the ruined arcane sanctuary. The shining blue blizzard that had plagued the mountain for days had ceased the moment Aurelius's soul was shattered. Now, only normal, gentle snow fell from the golden sky of the Savage Lands.
As Ren stepped onto a snow-covered plateau, his boot hovered over an invisible, lingering tripwire, a remnant of the Avatar of Magic's S-Rank traps. Before the tripwire could trigger, Ren's crimson eyes flashed.
[Passive Skill Activated: Arcane Nullification.]
The world around Ren instantly shifted into a matrix of glowing, complex formulas. He saw the sequence of mana required to detonate it, the flow of its elemental energy, and its weak point. Ren didn't swing his scythe. He simply flared a fraction of his Divine Mana, unleashing it into the trap's weak point like a precise needle.
CRACK!
The invisible tripwire sizzled and vanished into harmless mist. The S-Rank spell, capable of freezing a city block, unraveled in less than a second simply because Ren had looked at it.
"Convenient," Ren whispered, his breath pluming in the cold air.
The crimson chat box popped up, the text glowing with a soft, warm light that contrasted the freezing environment.
[The God of Fate is tracing the outline of your jaw on her screen.]
[God of Fate]: You absorb their laws and turn them into simple parlor tricks. You are the ultimate predator, my King.
[God of Fate]: Are you tired? Your Divine Vitality heals your flesh, but your soul has been stretched today. I can sing to you if you wish.
"I'm fine," Ren replied, burying his hands into the pockets of the Embrace of the Weaver.
He wasn't physically tired, but the constant hum of the 37% soul synchronization in the back of his mind was a weight to carry. He could feel her emotions, the intoxicating, obsessive devotion bleeding into his own emotional spectrum. He had to keep an iron-clad grip on his own identity to prevent himself from smiling back at the screen.
He looked toward the sunlit valley that lay fifty miles to the south.
"Two major factions left," Ren muttered. "Light and Wealth."
[God of Fate]: Zealots and merchants. They are already pooling their remaining forces. They know you are coming. They are terrified.
[God of Fate]: But there is a shadow hiding behind them, Ren. A rat that smells like chaos. Be careful.
Ren narrowed his eyes. Chaos. The God of Mischief.
****
Fifty miles south, in the heart of the Golden Valley.
The Savage Lands were generally a nightmare of jungles and volcanic ash, but the Avatar of Wealth had used his immense, pay-to-win resources to form an entire valley into a fortified, glittering stronghold. The walls were made of polished gold and reinforced with holy magic.
Inside the primary command tent, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.
"Gideon is dead. Aurelius is dead. Silas is dead." The Avatar of Wealth, a man named Valerius, slammed his jewel encrusted fist onto the map table. He wore armor made of overlapping gold coins, reverberating with S-Rank defensive enchantments. "The entire pantheon is watching us hemorrhage Karma Points! My Constellation is furious!"
Standing across from Valerius was Lucius, the Avatar of Light. Lucius was blinding to look at. He wore pristine white platinum armor and possessed six ethereal, shimmering wings of pure holy energy protruding from his back. He was Level 86, the pinnacle of holy magic and self righteous justice.
"Do not let fear cloud your faith, Valerius," Lucius said, his voice echoing with an annoying resonance. "Gideon and Aurelius were arrogant. Silas was a creature of the dark. They fell because they lacked divine purity. This 'Executioner' is a demon, an anomaly born from the Weaver's madness. The Light will purge him."
"Purge him?!" Valerius spat, pointing at the golden sky. "He evaded Omniscience! He cut Death's shadow! I have five hundred elite mercenaries outside this tent, and you have three hundred Paladins, but I guarantee you, if that monster drops a gravity Domain on us, your 'divine purity' will be crushed into a fine red paste!"
"You lack vision, merchant." A third voice, smooth, amused, and utterly out of place, interrupted the argument.
Sitting lazily on a pile of gold crates in the corner of the tent was a young man. He didn't wear armor. He didn't radiate a suffocating aura. In fact, if one didn't look closely at the faint, chaotic halo flickering above his head, they would assume he was an unawakened civilian.
He wore a dark purple suit, his collar open, a silver chain hanging from his neck. His dark hair was messy, and his bright, emerald eyes lingered with amusement. He was shuffling a deck of cards with impossible speed. The cards seemed to float between his hands, defying gravity.
[Name: Loki]
[Class: The Grand Illusionist / The Fool (Legendary)]
[Level: 81]
[Sponsor: The God of Mischief]
"Loki," Lucius said, his face contorting in disgust. "The God of Mischief has no place in a council of war. Your tricks will not save us from the Anomaly."
Loki chuckled, a rich, melodic sound. He flicked his wrist, and a single card, The Fool shot across the room, burying itself half an inch into the solid oak of the tactical table, right between Lucius and Valerius.
"You guys are playing chess," Loki said, hopping off the crates and walking slowly toward the table. "You're moving your knights and your bishops, calculating trade offs. It's adorable, really."
Loki leaned over the table, looking at the shining map of the valley.
"But the Anomaly isn't playing chess," Loki whispered, his green eyes flashing with chaotic brilliance. "He's playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded revolver, and he's aiming it at your heads."
Valerius gritted his teeth. "So what is your grand plan, trickster? Run? The System will kill us if we abandon the Draft."
"I never said run," Loki smiled, his lips curling into a sharp grin. "I said you need to stop fighting his concepts. Silas tried to out-edge him. Gideon tried to out-punch him. Aurelius tried to out-math him. They all forced Domain Clashes, and he ate them alive."
Loki picked up the Fool card from the table, spinning it on his index finger.
"Ren Hanshin has a law of severance. So, don't give him anything to cut. Let him exhaust himself. Throw your holy barriers at him, Valerius. Let Lucius drop his choir of angels on the boy. I want to see how his new powers work."
"You want us to act as bait?!" Lucius roared, his holy aura flaring. "I am the hand of the God of Light!"
"You're a battery, Lucius," Loki corrected, tapping the paladin on his chestplate, "and right now, the flashlight needs to be turned on so I can see what's hiding in the dark. Break his stamina. Force him to use his Divine Mana. I will handle the rest."
Loki turned his back on the two furious Guild Masters and walked toward the tent's exit. He flipped a gold coin into the air, catching it without looking.
"Oh, and boys?" Loki called out over his shoulder. "Try not to die in the first five minutes. It ruins the suspense."
Loki stepped out of the tent, melting into the shadows of the valley, leaving the Avatars of Wealth and Light to their grim preparations.
Loki wasn't scared of Ren Hanshin. He was fascinated. He possessed the powers of 'The Fool', the wildcard of the universe. To Loki, the S-Rank stats, the rigid rules of the System, and the arrogant logic of the gods were just punchlines to a joke only he understood. Ren was a glitch in the punchline.
Loki was going to watch this demigod fight. He was going to analyze the 37% soul synchronization, and when the time was right, Loki was going to pull the rug out from under the universe.
****
Two hours later.
The ground at the northern entrance of the Golden Valley began to tremble. The combined army of Wealth and Light, eight hundred of the heavily armored, coordinated elites left in the Sovereign's Draft stood in perfect formation. They were protected by a massive, multi-layered SSS-Rank Holy Aegis, a barrier radiating pure white light designed to burn any hostile entity to ash upon contact.
Lucius and Valerius stood at the front of the army, their weapons drawn, sweating despite their immense power. From the treeline of the jungle, a solitary figure emerged. Ren Hanshin walked slowly, his midnight black coat billowing in the wind. The crystallized blood scythe was not in his hand. He looked unarmed, casually walking toward an army that could conquer a small country.
"Hold the line!" Lucius roared, his six ethereal wings flaring. "Do not engage until he strikes the barrier! His gravity domain cannot crush holy light!"
Ren stopped thirty feet from the tall wall of white energy. He tilted his head, looking at the SSS-Rank Holy Aegis. His crimson eyes glowed. The world around the barrier shifted into a cascade of shimmering white formulas and divine code. It was a masterpiece of defensive magic, woven from the faith of three hundred Paladins.
Ren didn't summon The Executioner's Block. He simply raised his right index finger.
"Nullify," Ren whispered. He tapped the center of the barrier.
He didn't use strength. He used pure, concentrated Arcane Nullification. He unleashed a sliver of his Divine Mana into the keystone of the spell's formula.
The reaction was nothing. The SSS-Rank Holy Aegis didn't shatter or explode. Ren narrowed his eyes. The matrix of the SSS-Rank Aegis was unimaginably dense. It was a lattice of three hundred Paladins' faith, anchored by the divine laws of the God of Light. There was no single weak point to tap. The formula was too thick. His Nullification skill hit its ceiling.
"Too dense," Ren murmured to himself. He would have to break it the hard way. The air around him dropped below freezing.
He reached out his right hand, and the massive, terrifying form of the Severance of Destiny shattered the air, the blade casting a bloody red glow across the valley.
Lucius sneered from behind the shield. "Your parlor tricks fail you, Anomaly! You cannot unweave the Light!"
Ren gripped the scythe with both hands, lowering his stance. He forced the crushing gravity and the concept of Severance tightly around the blade of his weapon, creating a vibrating micro domain.
"I don't need to unweave it," Ren said, his voice echoing with the dual resonance of the weaver. "I just need to cut it."
Ren pushed his Divine Agility and Divine Strength to their limits, blurring into a streak of black and crimson. He launched himself at the SSS-Rank wall. He swung the scythe with bone shattering force.
BOOM!
The impact sounded like a detonating warhead. The SSS-Rank Holy Aegis shattered under the sheer, brute force of conceptual severance. Millions of jagged shards of holy light exploded inward, tearing through the front ranks of the Paladins like shrapnel. The impenetrable wall was gone, but the exertion forced Ren to slide back half a pace, his boots carving deep trenches into the ground as he absorbed the recoil. It had cost him a chunk of Divine Mana.
Ren straightened his posture, flicking his scythe as the army of Light and Wealth lay exposed before him. The slaughter of the Golden Valley began.
High up on a distant cliff overlooking the valley, far out of range of any spell or gravity well, Loki sat on the edge, his legs dangling over the precipice. He was watching the breach through a pair of ornate, enchanted binoculars. He saw the slight recoil. He saw the burst of exertion required to break the shield.
Loki was grinning from ear to ear.
"Fascinating," Loki murmured to himself, shuffling his deck of cards with one hand. "So the Nullification has a hard cap. S-Rank at best. He had to use brute force and burn mana to break the Aegis. He isn't omnipotent."
Loki pulled a card from the deck. The Magician. He flicked it into the wind, watching it flutter down toward the bloodbath below.
"Keep dancing, Executioner," Loki whispered, his eyes shining with chaotic brilliance. "Burn through your stamina. Slay the zealots. Drink their blood, because when the curtain falls on this little act, you and I are going to put on a show the gods will never, ever forget."